How to Play with Your Monster: Mortarion

The Lord of the Death Guard, Mortarion

Ryan "Orcspit" Cherewich

Part 1:  All About Mortarion

Mortarion is a controversial badass.  There has been much gnashing of the teeth about him since the release of the 9th edition Death Guard codex.  It started with the question of being overpowered; how could any army be expected to kill such a defensive monster?  Then with the release of multiple damage d3+3 weapons, the conversation turned to how someone could even keep him alive for more than one turn. 

Let’s take a deeper look at the benefits and hinderances of Mortarion, and answer the most important question of all: Who doesn’t want a big stompy daemon Primarch in their list? 

With 18 Wounds, Toughness 8, -1 Damage and a 5+ feel no pain, Mortarion is one of the toughest models (if not the toughest) you can put on the table.  He’s made even tougher by the Death Guard psychic power Miasma of Pestilence, which gives him a -1 to be hit. 

Not only can Mortarion take damage, but he can also dish it out. The ranged weapons he packs are The Lantern (a 12-inch one-shot 3-damage pistol) and Phosphex bombs (6-inch 2d6 blast grenades). Mortarion can participate in all phases of the game, too. He has excellent movement for Death Guard with a 12-inch fly speed.  He can also cast two powers and deny three during the psychic phase.  

Mortarion has an array of debuffs he can apply to your opponent’s forces. Built in, he has the Living Plague warlord trait, so anything within three inches of him will not benefit from any auras.

Additionally, Mortarion is equipped with two contagions that always have at least a 9” range. The first contagion only applies if your whole army is pure Death Guard; Mortarion gains Nurgle’s Gift, which lowers all enemy units’ toughness by 1. The second contagion is any one of the six plague company warlord trait contagions.

The fight phase is his time to really shine, though; he has a base of seven attacks with two different weapon profiles on Silence (his scythe). These allow him to either make seven attacks at strength 16, each dealing d3+3 damage, or 21 attacks at strength 8, each one dealing 1 damage.

Anything in range of Mortarion’s melee range is in a world of hurt.

After reading all of that, I’m sure you’re ready to drop the money on Mortarion and get him on the field right away.  But not so fast… we need to discuss the downsides of Morty as well.

First, Mortarion unfortunately breaks the magic 18-wound threshold for terrain.  He doesn’t benefit from obscuring terrain or dense cover, and is very hard to hide on all but the densest of terrain.  When Mortarion is against strong gunline armies, they can hide behind obscuring terrain while they take their time blasting Mortarion off the table. 

Also, you sink a quarter of your total points into one single model.  This means that if an army can deal with him, you’ll be at a severe disadvantage.  The best example of this is a squad of five Bladeguard Veterans: With Transhuman applied, they can tie him up, easily tanking a round of melee combat from him.

So, on paper, Mortarion’s damage output seems overwhelming, and there are a lot of defensively buffed units that can render Mortarion useless. 

Great, so what the hell does all this mean? 

Basically, it means that Mortarion changes the game to be all about him.  The enemy player needs to look at the matchup and decide how to deal with Mortarion. If they can’t, the question becomes how to mitigate Mortarion.

For the Death Guard player, the questions to be asked are “Can my opponent deal with Morty?”  “How do I keep him safe long enough for him to have an impact?” and “What is the best way for Morty to make an impact?”

 

Part 2: How to Play Mortarion

Aggressively, that’s how.

Mortarion is the bullet sponge that keeps the rest of your army safe. Behind him, you have your Terminators, Tanks, Dreadnaughts, and Drones, and their job is to hold the objectives and kill the enemy. When Mortarion is within enemy lines, he forces the opponent to devote attention to him. Much like the classic distraction Carnifex, Mortarion runs straight at the most devastating firepower in the enemy’s army and figuratively yells, “Hey, everyone, look at me! Shoot me!”

When regarding contagions, only consider Gloaming Bloat and The Droning; they’re most disruptive to the enemy most of the time. Gloaming Bloat denies all hit and wound rerolls, as well as overwatch from enemy units within contagion range. As written on page 43 of the Death Guard Codex, “The Droning halves the movement characteristic of any enemy units within contagion range at the start of the movement phase for the entire phase.” Both contagions change an opponent’s game plan: Gloaming Bloat reduces the opponent’s damage output, and The Droning reduces their board control drastically. In nearly all cases, the best choice is Gloaming Bloat due to the reduction of damage inflicted on Mortarion. The one case where The Droning is best is when you face specific armies such as Orks or Necrons (without The Silent King) which don’t really have many rerolls (if any).

When running Mortarion, there are two important strategies to master: positioning and target prioritization. While Mortarion can’t benefit from obscuring terrain, it doesn’t mean he can’t benefit from any terrain; enemy units still need to draw true line-of sight to his model in order to shoot him. For example, if you are playing on a table with Nova Ls, take full advantage of them: hide Mortarion from as many enemy units as possible for as long as possible.

While Nova Ls can protect him from ranged threats, taking advantage of difficult ground can limit the number of enemy units that can charge Mortarion and bog him down in combat. Always endeavour to place him in positions to take advantage of as much terrain as possible. Consider positioning him in a way that enemy units will need to charge through the difficult terrain to reach him.

The final key to positioning to make sure you get his auras impacting the enemy as fast as possible. The sooner you can take advantage of Living Plague and Gloaming Bloat, the longer he will stay alive.

Mortarion has several ways he can threaten the enemy, either by attacking an objective, or attacking a key unit of the enemy’s forces. The more obvious choice is to attack a key unit: these are usually slow-moving, high-damage units like The Silent King, Redemptor Dreadnaughts, and Tank Commanders, and you don’t want them to shoot at the rest of your army. Even though these are the units that the enemy likely wants to shoot Mortarion, you ultimately play a game of chicken with the opponent -- you make the opponent decide if they want to try to kill Mortarion or run away from him. Therefore, it’s best to move Mortarion with the intent to put pressure on the enemy’s key units. When he moves up through the center of the board, he can threaten most directions. This makes it difficult for enemy units to run and avoid him.

Attacking an objective is a bit trickier; Mortarion doesn’t have Objective Secured, so his attempts to hold the objective are done through brute force alone. Ideally, it’s best to target an objective further away on the board that would be difficult to hold with the rest of your forces. Also, attacking an objective can pull the enemy units out of position and force them to react. Rather than deal with the bulk of your army, they must divert Mortarion with units or else you’ll outscore them on Primary Objectives in that turn. Attacking objectives works best against fast armies that avoid Mortarion rather than deal with him head-on, such as Drukhari, Harlequins, and Orks.

An upside of Mortarion is that he doesn’t need a lot of supporting models. Usually, just one Malignant Plague Caster that runs Miasma of Pestilence and Gift of Plagues will suffice. The Plague Caster’s goal is to stay within 18 inches of Mortarion to cast buffs on him, and outside of 24 inches of enemy psykers to avoid Deny the Witch.

While Mortarion works in most matchups, there are a few that will start you on the wrong foot. The most obvious of these is Adeptus Mechanicus; due to the massive amount of firepower and the extra-long range on all their guns, it’s not incredibly difficult for them to kill Mortarion before he can begin to become a threat. Adeptus Sororitas and Astra Militarum also have the required firepower to down Mortarion quickly. Losing Mortarion turn one can be a massive setback that costs you the entire game.

It’s true that running Mortarion is a risk. You dedicate a large chunk of army points to a single model that can’t be hidden, plus certain armies can shoot him off the board in one turn. But his upside is that he lets you dictate the control of the game even before you place a single model on the table. You make the opponent play your game, which gives you control and can give you the upper hand psychologically. Mortarion is controversial, but he’s a badass, and every Death Guard player should want to play him.